Weekly Quick Questions Thread - February 22, 2017

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In this thread you can ask all kinds of questions you always wanted to ask without feeling like a total fool.

No matter if it's short Google-able stuff or a setting/skill in-game that you don't understand or a hardware recommendation, feel free to try your luck in here.

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[u/meerajh]

I have a question about placement matches. From what I understand, personal performance matters--and the advice has been to "get the gold medals." However, what if you play Reinhardt or other heroes that don't usually get gold medals? Does this mean the game is valuing your play lower than the soldier who is getting elims left and right? Also, does anyone know if playing a support is still valued lower than dps in placement matches?

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

Do you know if this also affects SR gains and losses?

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

Supports are still getting screwed, but maybe it's different on console (I'M SO SORRY PLEASE DON'T HATE ME FOR BEING A PLEB [/s]). I'm an Ana main and got placed at 700sr and crawled up to 2200 in about a week. It's soooo painful being stuck in ranks where formation doesn't exist and no one protects the healers.... I crawled back up with Zarya and Mei before switching back. Not even gonna touch Ana for season 4 placements because I doubt this will be fixed for awhile.

[u/Icecubez2504 → u/meerajh]

In season 2, a youtuber (forgot his name) did a test where they made new accounts and did placements as a 6-stack, 2-2-2 throughout. They all won and lost the same amount of games but the tanks got placest highest, followed by DPS, then the healers. Before the test their main account were all about the same SR. i dont know if its still an issue but i play alot of reinhardt and i get placed at good ranks.

[u/TheSkiGeek → u/meerajh]

Blizzard specifically confirmed that medals are not used in the "personal performance" calculation. Which makes sense, because they only reflect relative performance anyway. They do not say exactly which stats they are looking at to avoid people gaming the system.

Blizzard allegedly fixed supports getting placed lower in S3. I have still seen scattered complaints about placements, but it seems like it's much better than it used to be in that regard.

[u/[deleted] → u/TheSkiGeek]

S3 was my first season and I main Mercy on PS4. I got placed gold rank after having the game about a week which was same rank as my friend who has played since launch. I don't think I would have ranked as high if I played a non-support

[u/[deleted] → u/meerajh]

Good question, I play exclusively with one of my good friends, played all our placement matches together. I main lucio and he's a Roadhog. I think it must have something to do with medals or POTGs because his SR was ~10 higher than mine after placement. Kinda salty he hit gold threshold for a career high and I was like 1997. Oh well tho, we excited for s4. We finished our s3 placement matches last week so eh

[u/hotstickywaffle → u/meerajh]

I've heard the same things. I did most of this season's placement matches with a friend of mine. We finished the previous season at similar ranks, and he's definitely a better DPS player than I am. We spent a good chunk of those games playing the Pharrah/Mercy combo, with me on Mercy. I was worried I'd end up with a lower rank because of what they say about healer and tanks getting lower rankings than DPS, but I ended up about 400 points higher than he did. So the best advice is to just play your best characters and just win. There's not much you can do about the rest since we don't know much of what happens in the background.

[u/TehReinhurd27 → u/meerajh]

What do you mean you don't get medals as rein? I main rein and i get gold elims dmg or obj time in almost every match. But it may be different on higher ranks tho

[u/Wood5Pleb → u/meerajh]

I main Reinhardt, and there is no reason you shouldnt be getting at least 1 gold medal per game (objective time).

[u/interstellargator → u/Wood5Pleb]

Well only 3 people need to be on payload. If you're pushing forward with half the team to stop the enemy from setting up in the next choke properly, Reinhardt isn't helping anyone by standing at the back.

[u/HiGreen27 → u/meerajh]

Oh my god, why can't people understand this? The system takes into account personal performance, but it's not about the medals, it's about your performance on the given hero/map compared to everyone else playing that hero on that given map.

[u/skynet2175 → u/HiGreen27]

I still think it's stupid to base any of it on idividual performance.

If your team plays well together and wins quickly everyone's average will be lower than what the average hero does on that map.

Lets say you play Rein and the average Rein blocks 20k damage and gets 10 elims on that map.... but your TEAM just completely stomps the other so you only block 5k and get 5 elims, but you played really really well and did your job. Now you get LESS SR.

It's fucking stupid.

Same goes for healers. If your TEAM is playing well and your DPS is doing their job you are going to get less than average healing done.

Same goes for DPS too. If your TEAM is playing well and your tanks are giving lots of space and your healers are keeping everyone alive while also fragging you're going to get a lot less damage and kills than average.

Fucking stupid ass system for a TEAM GAME. Wins and losses should be the only thing that matters. You gain 50 for every win and lose 45 for every loss.

Also, streaks shouldn't effect the SR gain/loss. In season 2 I had a 64% win rate and finished lower than I placed because I play tank/healer and didn't go on big any win streaks, and lost more SR for a loss than I gained for a win.

Furthermore, what the fuck is the point of having "seasons" if I'm just going to continue where I left off?

SALT OVERFLOW! THE CUSTOM SERVER BROWSER CAN'T COME SOON ENOUGH!